Whitehall and the control of prices and profits in a major war, 1919-1939

For much of the interwar period there was discussion in Whitehall of the policy to control prices and profits in any future major war. Opinion was divided between those who believed that the control of prices and profits would be necessary in return for controlling labour in the light of the experience of the First World War, and those who focused on the financial aspects of the issue, in which the control of prices and profits was seen to play little positive role. This second strand of thinking, rooted in the treasury, predominated, particularly once rearmament began: the co-operation of business and labour, it was argued, was best achieved by maintaining the status quo. As a result, once war did break out, legislation had to be enacted very rapidly to meet popular demands. More generally, this study throws light on the nature of interwar government in Britain and its attitude towards intervention

Using evolutionary algorithms to resolve 3-dimensional geometries encoded in indeterminate data-sets

This thesis concerns the development of optimisation algorithms to determine the relative co-location, (localisation), of a number of freely-flying 'Smart Dust mote' sensor platform elements using a non-deterministic data-set derived from the duplex wireless transmissions between elements. Smart dust motes are miniaturised, microprocessor based, electronic sensor platforms, frequently used for a wide range of remote environmental monitoring applications; including specific climate synoptic observation research and more general meteorology. For the application proposed in this thesis a cluster of the notional smart dust motes are configured to imitate discrete 'Radio Drop Sonde' elements of the wireless enabled monitoring system in use by meteorological research organisations worldwide. This cluster is modelled in software in order to establish the relative positions during the 'flight' ; the normal mode of deployment for the Drop Sonde is by ejection from an aeroplane into an upper-air zone of interest, such as a storm cloud. Therefore the underlying research question is, how to track a number of these independent, duplex wireless linked, free-flying monitoring devices in 3-dimensions and time (to give the monitored data complete spatio-temporal validity). This represents a significant practical challenge, the solution applied in this thesis was to generate 3-dimensional geometries using the only 'real-time' data available; the Radio Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) data is generated through the 'normal' duplex wireless communications between motes. Individual RSSI values can be considered as a 'representation of the distance magnitude' between wireless devices; when collated into a spatio-temporal data-set it 'encodes' the relative, co-locational, 3-dimensional geometry of all devices in the cluster. The reconstruction, (or decoding), of the 3-dimensional geometries encoded in the spatio-temporal data-set is a complex problem that is addressed through the application of various algorithms. These include, Random Search, and optimisation algorithms, such as the Stochastic Hill-climber, and various forms of Evolutionary Algorithm. It was found that the performance of the geometric reconstruction could be improved through identification of salient aspects of the modelled environment, the result was heuristic operators. In general these led to a decrease in the time taken to reach a convergent solution or a reduction in the number of candidate search space solutions that must be considered. The software model written for this thesis has been implemented to generalise the fundamental characteristics of an optimisation algorithm and to incorporate them into a generic software framework; this then provides the common code to all model algorithms used.EPSRC sourced bursary via The University of Exete

From pipe organ to pianoforte: the practice of transcribing organ works for piano with a critical study of César Franck's Prélude, fugue et variation, op. 18 and Johann Sebastian Bach's prelude and fugue in D major, BWV 532

Thesis (DM) – Indiana University, Music, 202

Multinational enterprise and government controls on outward foreign direct investment in the US and UK in the 1960's

The 1960s have been seen as critical in the development of multinational enterprise by social scientists. Business historians have provided a context to these developments but are only now beginning to consider the 1960s in the light of access to archival material. This article analyses the nature and extent of the tension between multinational enterprise and U.S. and U.K. national governments in the 1960s caused by the tightening of controls on FDI introduced to resolve balance of payments problems. A comparative approach is adopted to illustrate that these tensions were not restricted to the US. The tension revolved around different conceptions of business investment decision-making and of the contribution of multinationals to the national economy. It is also suggested that the impact of these measures was at the micro-level and this highlights the value of business history approaches